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9 hours ago
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Once bitten … Two weeks ago, Keir Starmer found himself on the back foot for not immediately calling for a public inquiry into child grooming gangs. After Axel Rudakubana unexpectedly pleaded guilty to the murder of three girls and the attempted murder of 10 others at a dance class in Southport last July, the prime minister was determined not to be caught out again. On Monday he immediately announced a public inquiry and first thing on Tuesday he gave a press conference in Downing Street.
This was a Starmer hell-bent on seizing the initiative. Serious. Lawyerly. Kemi Badenoch has taken to criticising the prime minister for being a lawyer, not a leader. But Keir was out to prove you could be both. Indeed there were times when being a lawyer was an advantage. And this was very definitely one of them. Otherwise things can fall apart rapidly.
We recently tried a prime minister who had little respect for the law. Who didn’t feel obliged to follow his own rules, let alone anyone else’s. That didn’t work out so well. The country didn’t like a leader who was pathologically unable to tell the truth. Even the Tories got fed up with Boris Johnson in the end.
No such chance with Starmer. Keir is a cautious man. A man who double checks everything. A man who sometimes says too little for fear of saying too much. A man who believes in institutions, such as the police and the legal system.
Starmer began his statement with a reminder that this was all about the children who died. Getting justice for their families. Hence the public inquiry. No stone would be left unturned to uncover the truth. Nothing – no matter how embarrassing to the government – was off limits. There had been no cover-up. Of course he had been kept up to speed by the police throughout the investigation, but he was bound by the Contempt of Court Act. He couldn’t take the risk of revealing information just to get a few favourable headlines in the rightwing press.
And, yes, it had been tricky. Personally he would like to see the law changed. Clarified at the very least. Rudakubana had not initially been charged with terrorist offences – despite the presence of ricin and a book about al-Qaida training techniques – because there was no obvious sign of him having any terrorist ideology. He wasn’t an Islamist. He wasn’t even a Muslim. He was just a violent, sick teenager with a fascination for beheading and massacre videos who had three times slipped through the Prevent net.
Keir ended as he had begun. This was not a moment for point scoring. If things had gone wrong then the inquiry would make conclusions. Now was also not the time for Starmer to call the rioters “far right”. They were just criminals determined to make trouble. All in all, it was hard to think of a more balanced, considered response to a hideous crime. A statement to provide comfort and calm where necessary.
Unfortunately, this memo didn’t seem to have got to Nigel Farage. Nige was still in Washington, trying to get over his disappointment at not being part of The Donald’s inner circle at the inauguration. To Trump, Farage is just a useful idiot. Someone to blow hot smoke up his arse. So Nige woke up early and started tweeting. There had been a cover-up. Of course there had. He couldn’t say what the cover-up had been. Just that the politically correct, deep state had been at work again. Nige had an unfailing nose for this sort of thing.
In Nige world, responsibility is a word that generally goes missing. The rioters had been right to riot. It was only just and fair that they had. It had been the government trying to prevent rioters from lawfully rioting. Woke spoilsports.
Who wouldn’t automatically assume that online rumours that the suspect had been an Islamist who had entered the country on a small boat were true? Especially if you think the government was trying to conceal that. Any right-thinking person would riot.
Who could blame the rioters for continuing to riot even once the police had said the suspect came from a Christian family and was born in Cardiff. You can’t expect people to stop wrecking Southport. People needed to get their anger out. Besides, the police had probably been lying.
Come lunchtime and Yvette Cooper’s statement to the house, where she went over similar ground to Starmer, most MPs had quietened down a little. Had come to the conclusion the victims deserved better than partisan politics and that the government was probably telling the truth. That there had been nothing to gain for Starmer by indulging in a cover-up.
Though this didn’t stop the ever half-witted Chris Philp from hopping on the bandwagon in reply to Cooper. After grudgingly welcoming the national inquiry, he too slid down the cover-up rabbit hole. He wasn’t sure what the cover-up was but he was sure there must have been one nonetheless. He wasn’t bothered about the rule of law. He takes his orders from the rightwing tabloids.
Yvette tried to talk him down. This was just the way things worked. In previous terror incidents it had been left to the police to determine what information was released and when. It was not for the government to interfere. She went on to point out that the Tories had done exactly the same when they had been in power. Kemi, who was in the chamber, shook her head sadly. This would never happen again. Not on her watch.
Even Dicky Tice was a voice of reason. There were audible gasps when he asked a sensible question about changing the definition of terrorism. All quite different from his morning TV round on GB News where he had declared that a national inquiry was just the government’s way of kicking the can down the road. Then, consistency has never been his strength.
